Spectacular vernacular from someone who sometimes has something to say

Tag Archives: writers

If I wake up too early, as in 3 – 5 AM, or if I stay up too late, until those times, I get this feeling in my stomach. It’s the same feeling I have when I’m really scared or really upset.

It’s a nauseating mixture of emptiness and aching.

Ironically, this is usually the time when I can do the best writing. But it’s the kind of writing I don’t show many people. It’s always a little dark, and it’s sad, and for people who aren’t used to the darkness, it can be a bit jarring for them.

That’s one thing I’ve learned recently. People who aren’t familiar with ugliness have to be introduced very slowly to it, or not at all. These are the people who get visibly bothered by stories of my childhood, or are mind-blown that I can be witty and funny, not only in general, but also about that childhood. I’ve learned that I can’t be so nonchalant about it with them. I can’t shrug it off and say, “Yeah. This happened. Oh well. I lived,” because they can’t grasp the concept of a cruel mother and a dismal past.

I can laugh about a dark, witty joke that my sister makes about our father’s eventual release of his role as hero and his subsequent ignorance concerning the ways in which our mother began to reign over him, as well. Of how he just peeled out his own spine, notch by notch, and handed it over to her like a totem. We can joke about it, making the blackest humour out of it, but other people are horrified. Like the time our cousin was talking about how her eight-year-old son was once dropped by our father when he was climbing him, and now he was afraid of our father, and my sister just replied, “Don’t worry. He dropped us, too.” We thought it was hilarious, in our dark way. Our cousin just shook her head with a breathy scoff, used to the things we say, but her fiance was pretty shocked. He just sat there with this look on his face and I had to say, “Sorry, J. You’re not used to this humour yet.”

Because most people can’t find the humour in it. Or maybe in their own life’s ugliness at all. The idea that some people use humour as a coping mechanism are the strings that hold my marionette’s body up. I rarely got to laugh, growing up, but once I turned about 12, I had developed a sharp, entertainingly grim sense of wit and humour. I began to appreciate the jokes you had to lift up and look beneath to really get them.

I think this might be true for a lot of people who present to the world a funny, witty personality. People who have learned to laugh whenever the chance presents itself, because laughing was missing for so many years of their lives. You just kind of develop a superhuman sense for it. You begin to see the hilarity of Steven Wright — anyone, really, with his gloomy humour. Weekend Update was always my favourite part of SNL because you had to have a sense of the world to really appreciate the jokes.

Tina Fey is perfect for this. Maybe I feel that way because I can relate. I’m the first to laugh at myself or point out my flaws. Because I don’t think I’m better than anybody. If anything, I recognize exactly how fucked up I am and I know that in a lot of ways, this separates my from the pack. I will always be a little weird and introverted and dark. I was painted with that brush a long time ago and that shit don’t wash off.

Remember when Chris Farley killed himself? That guy was hi-larious. Everybody (worth knowing) has seen Black Sheep or Tommy Boy and obviously SNL. Everybody loved him. He was so funny and a bit self-deprecating and just awesome. But he was also one of us: a person who is forced to pull joy into his life with the fervour of someone who understood that the darkness could kill you. He lived his life by grabbing every opportunity by the balls and making it his bitch. He partied like a rock star and laughter probably fuelled him. Some people say that his overdose was accidental, some people don’t. I guess I just look at it like, we’re talking about someone who was no stranger to the perks crushed up and offered at parties in little white lines of escape. He knew what he liked and he knew how much to take, in order to feel the way he wanted. He was an artist, above all else, and his art was his life raft. Margaret Atwood said something along the lines of any form of art being the artist’s way of evading suicide. She fucking nailed it with that one. Artists are passionate people. Maybe not about the same things as most people, but our passion is no less real. We crave the feeling of living and laughing and the idea of being crammed into a cubicle or something is just a death warrant. I can pretend to be corporate, but it’s a short-lived motivation that keeps me there. Those are not my people.

My people, unfortunately for me up in my Canadian ice bubble, are in New York. Los Angeles. Lots of other places, obviously, but these are the places where opportunity is the thickest. It presents itself in wide ropes, while up here it’s kind of…like that shoelace liquorice. Except all stale and basically fucking useless. I can’t live on that! I can’t do anything with it! Well, except blog, I guess. But I’m not really sure what this is doing for me, in the long run.

I guess for now I just have to keep laughing at myself, maintain my usual sky-high level of self-deprecation, and writing out everything from the highs to the lows (also referred to as my dark and twisties), to the in betweens that sustain me. Despite all of the shit, I somehow still have this little voice inside my head that tells me to keep pushing and to keeping dreaming my lofty dreams. Kelly Oxford got outta here. So many people had this same dream and now they get to live it.